


move forward good man, you're capable

by CybertronianBeing



Series: Sad Boi Hourzzz [6]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Akaashi Keiji/Bokuto Koutarou, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Hugs, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Owl Bokuto Koutarou, Pro Volleyball Player Bokuto Koutarou, Sad, Sad Bokuto Koutarou, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, Writer Akaashi Keiji
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:36:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26524579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CybertronianBeing/pseuds/CybertronianBeing
Summary: “Do you think there’s something wrong with me?”Incriminatory request. Koutarou asked if he, KEIJI Bokuto agreed within his own soul body and mind that he already knew there was something wrong.“No, there could never be anything wrong with you, baby."He swallowed thickly. The tide receded.“Could anything I do make you not love me anymore?”Keiji flinched at this question, and Koutarou met his eyes again to calculate how the other’s calculated. The length of time it took for him to answer stretched his heart just a little bit.
Relationships: Akaashi Keiji/Bokuto Koutarou
Series: Sad Boi Hourzzz [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1806499
Comments: 3
Kudos: 57





	move forward good man, you're capable

**Author's Note:**

> WE. ARE. BACK. With, of course, the sad stuff. What better than to vent through writing? Anyway, little life updates: Iwa's up to legendarily cosplaying and drawing for our other Instagram account (@/oikawa.juice) while im up to quarantining because i got corona :((((( anyways STAY SAFE, WEAR YOUR MASK, WASH AND SANITIZE YOUR HANDS...and last but not least, know we're sending you guys tons of love :DDDDD. This is a good gateway story to distract from not sleeping even though i can barely stand without losing my balance but hey im not writer's blocked anymore!! YAY!!
> 
> In honor of suicide prevention month, James and I want to urge you to stay with us. Just stay another day. And another. And another. Yes, we realize there's no reason you should listen to us, but we want you to stay. Your soul is beautiful, you can fly even higher than you are right now, and can eventually change the world. We love you. Love you so much. More than you'll ever know.  
> -Cal

Koutatou’s steps trod heavy on the raised porch and rather than on the hook hammered into the wall, his bag sunk into the cold floor. Although his hair drooped not only from the foggy mist and sullen feelings, the shoes came off heel-toe, heel-toe all the same. 

The grout was slightly missing in that same corner, only a piece to his many on the growing D.I.Y list...he’d get to it later, he supposed. Something for a later Koutarou Bokuto. Later in the day. Week. Month. To be honest it really wouldn’t discover necessity until later that year, really. 

They were both so busy, Keiji especially. He worked so much. Typing away, finding deadlines and meeting them. Attention span apparently big enough to do what he needed to do. His husband didn’t quite understand it but the other said he enjoyed the hassles and rushes and such. 

Around the corner a pair of glasses met Bokuto’s amber beauties, warm and dramatic. Pooling, usually with a caramel joy. The past days, months, years, the same thing would ensue and Akaashi waited all the same in his own spot. 

He’d done so as many times as would indent the rug on the other side of the end table. Two little footprints, ‘tiny pressings’ as Bokuto-san would call them, that one of his would squish completely. 

Waiting for Bokuto to round the coffee table (that he’d complained sat ‘too much in the median of the room’ but Keiji’d remained steadfast that he liked it where it was at) he’d deeper alter the carpet in that same spot until his love would return home from practice and come pick him up, spin around exactly three and one eight times and then put him down in his same imprinted spot. 

And a kiss on his temple, after the removal of his glasses. Then, he’d be free to return to whatever he was doing beforehand. Glasses, kith, glasses return, return. Nothing would change, nothing had changed. 

The world could be against Koutarou Bokuto and Koutarou Bokuto would swing back. The planet would surely lose. There was no way it could win if it was against him. He could smile through hell, all of his teeth being pulled out or his limbs broken more than his heart would if he wasn’t doing it if it was for someone else. 

Yet there he stood with his back likening to scoliosis and his face twisted into some sort of rebellion with his positive mind. There wasn’t some form of togetherness about him. Lightning likened to shock his bones and fry his thought processes. His eyes shone with something far worse than rain from outside. 

Akaashi thought back to high school, when the ability to be around all the time to chase him around with his stupid umbrella was there. That dumbass...charging through the rain in his fresh pressed school uniform a day before a game. A cold...or worse. 

‘It’ll never happen to me, I’m invincible!’ He’d chirped on more than one occasion. 

‘Just because you’re invincible on the court doesn’t mean you’re not susceptible to the elements, Bokuto-san.’ 

‘You may not be wrong but…’

‘No, I’m always right.” And that he was, because one time or another, before a big game, Bokuto caught the nastiest cold even their coach had ever seen. It was a task to get Bokuto to stay in bed for more than an hour at a time because he got more restless than he did fever-ridden. 

His hands remained empty, the umbrella probably accidentally left in the locker room or maybe at the door. The rack would be dry, Keiji shrugged. He would’ve chuckled if the situation warranted it so. Genuinely, it would’ve been funny. The humor of the whole situation would have swallowed him, Kou’ next. 

Koutarou just stood there, watching Keiji with the same look he gave when he walked down the aisle. No, that wasn’t quite it. With an empty stare, where he saw nothing. No light? Not that, either. 

For the first time, ever, icicles froze the setter right where he was. Instead of loving where he was, they nailed his feet into the indentations. 

They hadn’t grown ragged, those two little spots. Instead, they’d grown soft for some odd reason. Or, at least, soft to him. Comfortable. Nothing less. 

Soaked in his blood, now, the ice driven through his fragile feet and into the floor grown ragged. All of his thoughts clotted on the spinning ceiling fan and sound machine floating through the bedroom and boiling water in the kitchen, all stuck on the man across from him who couldn’t move, either. 

Perplexed by the low light, the structure of the muscular former Ace of Fukurodani amazed him. Every feature, every curve. Not in a sexual or obsessive way, no, his mind didn’t reach there in unrelenting times. He prided himself in that. 

No, he’d just never paused his studies long enough to appreciate how strong Kou’d grown since they were children. Physically, mentally. And then in their marriage. He was no longer a seed but a sapling and then a tree. The shade he’d given from the scorching sun helped even he grow into a towering tree. Greener, brighter, more positive. He stood tall and broad shouldered and smiled wider than anyone he’d ever seen. 

Somehow, he could smile brighter than the sun he offered shade from. 

How did he do that?

Perhaps that was his own stupid human trick. Something he prided himself in. Koutarou Bokuto was just that amazing. The boy he saw, love at first sight. The guy he set to, no where else he’d rather be. The man he married, no one else he’d rather find. 

Chained to the floor when all he seemed destined to do was fly. 

“They told me to come home early from practice, Akaamshi. I was happy to see you earlier, I’m surprised that you were paying attention for me this early,” He finally broke the staring contest, tearing a slit through their connection for a brief moment, straining even his own lungs. 

Thick air tied a noose around their windpipes and choked the hickory clock’s ticking to a halt. 

He wanted to question, but knowing why things were different wouldn’t appease the settlement, “I usually watch just in case, Bokuto-san,” But knowing if he was okay would stay warranted, “Are you feeling unwell?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t be vague, ace. You know I’ll take care of you if you just say the word.”

“They said there’s something wrong with me.”

“If incredible skill counts, I’d say I agree with them,” Keiji felt as though he was whisked away into an old black and white movie, in which the red-lipped female argued, and the man would step up with a rebuttal to all of her doubts and worries. 

Although, he doubted the man would shoot himself in the foot, twice, and continue on with no pain. Move forward, good man, you’re capable.

“No...nothing like that, Keiji.” 

He hasn’t used that name in quite some time. Only when he’s serious, or about to cry. 

“They told me something about my brain wasn’t right...that I need to go figure out what’s wrong with me, ‘Kaashi. I didn’t even know there was something wrong with me. They asked a bunch of questions and tried to hang whatever these low feelings I’ve been having on different things but I’m tired of that.”

Shit. That’s not what the trainers were supposed to do AT ALL. He’d called them in hopes to figure out what was going on with his husband’s emotional drops and withdrawals, with the more frequent lows, even more frequent than before. 

Keiji knew whatever was going on was far out of his line of expertise, so finding out if this was going on at practice as well was a good start so he’d have all the facts to explain to the professional. Iwaizumi and his team said they would do an evaluation...they weren’t supposed to hurt him emotionally. 

Iwaizumi would’ve done a better job. Keiji used a moment to wonder. 

Iwaizumi wasn’t working with the team on Wednesdays, just his trainees and Iwa’s assistant. Damnit he knew better than to call on a Tuesday night. He knew better than to not tell Bokuto, but how could he have known what they were gonna ask or do? Why should he be worrying about that? This isn’t the 18th century. Anger bubbled like the pot on the stove. He’d have a word with them. A very unkind few of them. 

Those trainees had a history of getting competitive to the point of cutting corners and hurting others...or acting like complete...children. Their intentions most likely weren’t to be harmful and were to get their strongest player at his tip top ability, but you don’t tell someone...that. 

Keiji assumed there was more than that, and Bokuto kept some of it to himself. This seemed pent up, saved for a good long while. Bokuto’s wings were strong. With each downstroke he could beat a whole lot of wind and emotion. He nose dove into everything with full-tuck but something about this really crushed him, didn’t it?

“Do you think there’s something wrong with me?” 

The question did not catch him off guard, but it did linger in the air and trace its ugly fingers underneath his chin, but he strained to crane away. To bite his tongue. It felt like the emphasis on the ‘YOU’ that really stole away his level head. It wasn’t as much of asking for medical advice as one would ask a doctor. 

Incriminatory request. Koutarou asked if he, KEIJI Bokuto agreed within his own soul body and mind that he already knew there was something wrong.

“No,” the silent battle between truth and sugarcoat thickly waited in his mouth but dried out the spit waiting there. Soon he wouldn’t be able to talk and instead either laid to rest in his own bloody grave or forced to rely on physical affection to speak louder volumes than words could. “There could never be anything wrong with you, baby.”

He swallowed thickly. The tide receded. 

“Could anything I do make you not love me anymore?”

Keiji flinched at this question, and Koutarou met his eyes again to calculate how the other’s calculated. The length of time it took for him to answer stretched his heart just a little bit. 

“No, because no matter how bad a decision you made, I’d still love you to a deficit. I’d love you even though it’d kill me because you could hurt me but never cause me to stop loving you.”

Bokuto wanted to say something else, but Keiji kept going, “Your mind is a beautiful mind, it’s perfect even if sometimes it makes you feel how you don’t want to feel. Does that make sense?”

He nodded the least bit. Slightly unnerved that he couldn’t find tears to cry at a moment when he found so close to a total crash mentally, he clenched and unclenched his fists, “Do you...think you could come hug me over here today, Agaashi?” 

“Yeah, I think I could arrange that,” And he picked up his feet and moved like he was supposed to. One. Two. Stride. Stride. They were nowhere near as long as Koutatou’s steps, but he took them on his behalf, anyway. 

His face cupped so perfectly into Keiji’s hands, and gentle lips met element-wasted ones for a brief moment before his face pressed into soft shoulder socket. Their bodies linked together in cool, courageous embrace. 

Bokuto held his breath. Each time the inhale faltered, he quickly released it in favor to take another huge on in. For fear he’d fall apart at the lungs if he didn’t. The arms wrapping him tight held him together at the seams, and he worried if they let him go, he’d falter as a man or falter as an entity bound for the seeping cracks of the Earth’s crust. 

The length of time stretched longer than two and an eighth turn, but the clocks didn’t construct bindings strong enough to constrict his airborne soul, and he held on for dear life. He turned his feathering head to breathe in the familiar smell of his husband’s shampoo and conditioner mix and found comfort in it, and suddenly wished for lazy cuddles and desperate struggles. 

It made him wish for home, for safe haven. 

Already, he was there, but some sort of lusty sense forced him to believe that he was somewhere else. How could that be, when in Keiji Bokuto’s arms, he was already fully at home even if they weren’t within their cozy house.

**Author's Note:**

> This piece really resonates with me. I have so many people trying to put reasons to what's wrong with my brain, what's wrong with my mental state...people like my parents who want to find SOMETHING to blame for why I am the way I am instead of just realizing it's not just something I can 'cope with' and move on. It's not angst. It's not something I can control...just listen.  
> Sorry I had to take it all out on Bokuto. If you can relate, hang in there. We're getting there. Love you. 
> 
> His us up with those kudos or a comment if you really enjoyed. You're awesome. James and I love you and can't wait to release a whole lot more pretty soon! <3  
> -Cal


End file.
